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[quote user="henry6"] Again businessmen are not politicians and politicians are not practicing businessmen....nor necessaryily practical.  Today's business climate is ruled by "bottom liners": CPA's and investment specialists (to be nice).  Each movement, each operation, each job, in any company has to bring something to the bottom line directly or it should be done away with.  In other words, they don't look at a business as a "service" but as an individual product.   In this case the politicians are looking at running trains and ignoring the whole operation as a service.  You provide meals on long distance trains or wherever in order to entice and keep the patronage.  If there were no meals (or sleeping cars) then there would be no riders.  Add the meals (and/or the sleeping cars) and charge what's possible and try to keep the fares high enough to offset the loses and still make a buck.  At least that is the theory of providing passenger rail service rather than just running trains.  COngress don't get it, especially those paid off by the oil and gas lobby, the airline lobby, etc. [/quote] Business executives must keep in mind all of the entity's key stakeholders, i.e. customers, creditors, regulators, employees, shareholders, etc.  They know that they must add value for all of them, or they are out of business. A business ultimately must offer goods and services that customers are willing to pay for in an arms length transaction. The goods and services must add value for the customer.  Apple Inc., 3M, IBM, Wells Fargo, Caterpillar, Ford, Norfolk Southern, Southwest Airlines, Florida Power & Light, etc. are just a few examples of companies that understand the importance of customer service and deliver it every day.  All of them have employees whose full time job is customer service and customer relations.    Businesses must pay attention to the bottom line over the long run.  If they don't they are out of business. Not so with government!  Which is the reason a government agency should not be involved in a commercial activity, i.e. Amtrak, airport operations, etc. Business must pay attention to costs, which amongst other things means not employing people who do not add value to the organization over the long run. Which is the way it ought to be. But to say that a successful business ignores customer service and only pays attention to the bottom line, i.e. adds value for the shareholders only, does not square with my experience or the thousands of people I encountered in my business career. I spent all of my working life in Fortune 250 companies. Moreover, I was a senior manager, which means that I had access to the company's executives and, thereby, gained knowledge of how big companies are run. I never met an executive who did not understand the importance of adding value to all of the aforementioned stakeholders.
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